Council 'rainy day fund' slammed as school repair backlog runs into millions
The council’s finances were scrutinised at a meeting of the Resource Management Working Group on Tuesday and a £19.38m backlog of repairs to council properties was revealed.
The priority maintenance backlog for schools in the district stands at £3.69million alone and includes urgent works that will “prevent immediate closure of the premises and address an immediate high risk to the health and safety of the occupants”.
Tuesday’s meeting was the group’s first since July when the problem was first identified, but owing to the
cancellation of two consecutive meetings the issue was shelved.
Once again no-one was present to explain the figures or how serious some of the required repairs are, and now questions are being asked of the council’s property and finance port-folios.
The shadow portfolio holder for education, Alan Macro (Lib Dem, Theale), said: “This represents nearly a third of the priority 1 maintenance required for schools. This high backlog suggests that the council is not doing enough maintenance to keep our children safe in our schools.”
The group resolved to investigate and call senior figures to account. Despite the maintenance backlog, according to the latest figures the council also has £10m in reserves.
Changes to business rates and the volatility of demand-led services are the main sources of worry. But the opposition finance spokesman David Rendel (Lib Dem, Thatcham Central) said the Conservatives were “squireling away” millions which could be better spent keeping open day centres and retaining staff, or fixing up crumbling school buildings.
A new £750,000 fund, set up to deal with problems in adult social care, was criticised by Mr Rendel who said the money should have been used "to avoid the worst of the vicious cuts”.
“On budget day we pointed out that our miserly council was already hoarding far more than it needed to cover the costs of all the possible risks. They certainly do not need yet another special pot of money, to cover risks which they knew all about already when they set the budget.”
Stringent cutbacks and reining in departmental spending has led to a predicted a first quarter overspend of £36,000. The sum is a far cry from last year's equivalent figure of £1.28m over the same period of time.
The Executive Member for Finance & Economic Development, Alan Law (Cons, Basildon) said: “West Berkshire Council does not have excessive reserves. Indeed our General Reserve is close to the statutory minimum.
"However, being prudent and given the volatile nature of current times, we have created some specific risk fund Reserves to cover for example the unpredictable in-year ups and downs of our statutory care obligations."